A sports psychologist explains why tracking can help you reach your fitness goals

By Kim Gillan | Presented by Under Armour| 2 years ago

Image: iStock

If you're working towards a health or fitness goal, keeping track of your progress — whether it's through an app, device or a good old notebook — could be the key to your success. Here's why.

It keeps you focused

One of the best things about tracking your exercise is that it keeps your goals front-and-centre in your mind.

"It draws our attention back to the behaviour we are looking at improving and we automatically start making little subtle changes towards our goals," explains Dr Joann Lukins, psychologist from Peak Performance Psychology.

"If you're wearing an activity tracker with the aim of walking more, just by wearing the tracker, we tend to walk more. If we keep a food diary we tend to re-think that biscuit."

It fires good brain chemicals

Tracking your performance also works on a deeper part of your brain.

"When you are tracking your exercise, you are making your brain more aware of achieving the goal," Dr Sean Richardson, performance psychologist at the High Performance Academy told Coach.

By setting long and short-term goals, there are small achievements to celebrate each session and your brain responds with feel-good chemicals.

"When you are aware that you are progressing towards a goal and achieving goals that you set for yourself, that awareness helps to release hormones that make you feel good and make you more motivated," Dr Richardson explains.

"You will get a release of dopamine that will go, 'I like that, I'm going to do that again'. Anything that releases the right brain chemistry behind motivation can help sustain activity."

It gives you something to celebrate

If your weight loss has stalled or you don't seem to be building speed or strength, motivation can start to wane.

But Dr Lukins says flicking back through your tracking app or notebook can swiftly remind you how far you've come.

"It's a way of recording progress," she explains.

"You might think 'I'm not getting anywhere' but then you see that six months ago you couldn't bench press 20kg and now you're doing 30kg."

It provides performance insights

Had a really good session? Have a quick read of your day or week prior and look for nutrition or sleep patterns you could replicate to set you up for success again.

Similarly, if your performance was sub-par, you might want to reflect on your sleep patterns, hydration and diet in the days leading up to the session.

"With elite athletes, we monitor their mood, hydration and weight before a training session and after," Dr Lukins points out.

"There is something to be said for keeping an eye on your health and what you are doing."

Similarly, flicking back through your year can remind you of periods of down-time or illness or injury that could factor in to where you're at today.

"It's another way of recording your data," Dr Lukins says.

"If you're going for your annual check-up with your GP it could be a good way of saying, 'What did my year look like? That's right, back in March I didn't do any walking because my knee was sore'."

Take a flexible approach

As much as there are incredible insights to be obtained from regular tracking, Dr Lukins says that if you find yourself tiring of the process, it might be a good idea to take a break.

"You don't want to fatigue of it — if it is starting to get boring or become a chore it might be a sign you need to back off and come back to it later or do it a bit differently," she says.

Some people like to limit their monitoring to certain time periods.

"It can be a way of you being aware of your general physical activity patterns but you don't have to do that for every day of the year," Dr Lukins says.

"You might put on a tracker for two weeks and see what days you do more walking, or choose to track the first week of the month or do it for three months to get some valuable insights."